#122 - WHAT GOD SAYS CONCERNING HELL – J.F. RODGERS

“May some poor soul whose loved one has died without receiving Christ as their Saviour, find a measure of relief in the assurance that they are neither now, nor ever shall be, tortured endlessly and consciously in an inferno of fire wrongly described as the eternal abode of the dammed. Instead, they will be deprived of life until the lake of fire which is the second death no longer exists.”

#124 - ETERNITY EXPLAINED – LEE SALISBURY

“Eternity and its synonyms are grievous mistranslations of Hebrew and Greek words. Both the Old and the New Testament misuses indicate a biased mind-set which hides God’s true nature and purpose. Based upon decisions made in this life on earth, it is supposed that the vast multitudes that miss heaven enter an eternal hell of burning torment and anguish. 

The uniform translation of aion and its adjective form aionios solves many inconsistencies in Scripture study. Jesus came to give life eonian, a quality of relationship with the Father through Himself, a life that is only the earnest of much more to come. 

The most shameful consequences of this error are the grotesque images which Christianity projects of God, Who is really so loving, wise, and powerful. God’s love nature corresponds with His purpose. His wisdom and majesty dominate the ages through which all mankind will be drawn to God’s goal of creating man in His own image, ‘that God may be All in all’ (1Cor. 15:28).

#126 – FUNDAMENTALS OR BASIS OF BELIEF – Thomas Griffith

“We will get good out of evil. Our gracious Educator does evolve for us out of corruption, temptation and sin, new purposes, new skill, new triumphs. 

Beyond the overruling of intermediate evil into subserviency to a higher good, what has been superinduced as a transition state of things is therefore seen to be necessary only for a time. It will pass away with the functions which it is made to fulfill. It will at last be superseded by the highest good for everyone.”

#128 - This is a thrilling poem by Matthew Arnold, keeping in mind the following fact.

Universalism was The Prevailing Doctrine Of The Christian Church During Its First Five Hundred Years

hellbusters.8m.com/updcontents.html 

As students of the history of Christian doctrine know, among believers in eternal torment, Tertullian was one of the most extreme. That is why I think this poem is so powerful. It sent a thrill up and down my spine. :-) 

“He saves the sheep, the goats he doth not save!”

So rang Tertullian’s sentence, on the side

Of that unpitying Phrygian sect which cried, --

“Him can no fount of fresh forgiveness lave

Who sins, once washed by the baptismal wave!”

So spake the fierce Tertullian. But she sighed,

The infant church, of love she felt the tide

Stream on her from her Lord’s yet recent grave,

And then she smiled, and in the Catacombs,

With eye suffused, but heart inspired true,

On those walls subterranean, where she hid

Her head in ignominy, death and tombs,

She her Good Shepherd’s hasty image drew,

And on His shoulders, not a lamb, a kid.

#130 – FROM A SERMON ON UNIVERSALISM – Stopford A. Brooke

“That Christ should have descended to assume the nature of all men, only to cast them away as refuse to be burned, does so contradict His revelation that it is no wonder that the idea of everlasting damnation should have destroyed men’s belief. 

No, the earthly dead will move on, a mighty stream to mingle in the ocean of the righteousness of God, on that far off but certain day when God will be All in all.”